A character in rockaway muses, "If my mom knew what was inside of me, she'd cut it out. She'd have my thoughts removed like they're some kind of cancer." The tension between interior monologue and outward appearance is at the heart of Mark Street's drama, which follows three teenage girls who are about to graduate high school and face the world outside their shabby little Queens peninsula. Kelly (Laura Johnson), an Oberlin-bound musician, is dealing with her mother's death by dating a man old enough to be her father. Juanita (Jennifer Brown), a politically conscious late-bloomer, is struggling to define herself under the domineering weight of her activist mother. And Merida (Vanessa Yuille) stifled by her working-class home and smitten with her own good looks, just wants to be famous. They perform a scene from Chekhov's Three Sisters amid the ruins of this faded beach community, but will they ever get to Moscow-that is, to Manhattan? In the tightly knit community explored in rockaway, where American flags wave and everybody knows your name-the kind of place where the Irish Circle still throws an annual pig roast-a party in Dumbo followed by a drunken limo ride through Times Square can seem like the ultimate field trip. But all the while the three friends are haunted by the lingering fear that a year from now, their lives will have changed, and a friendship built on drama club and checking out boys on the boardwalk may not be up to the challenge.